Essay about Autobiography at an Air-Station by Philip Larkin

A sonnet by definition is, a poem of fourteen lines using any of a number of formal rhyme schemes, in English typically having ten syllables per line. A poem is a piece of writing that says a lot in a few words; this sonnet does exactly that, it utilizes a multitude of literary devices to tell a story of a writer examining life with an ending message to push forward and go. In “An Echo Sonnet”, the author, Robert Pack uses repetition, hypophora, antithesis and synecdoche to reveal the voice experiencing writer's block which leads to the discussion of life and death between the voice and the echo.

A distinguished sense of hollowness, and darkness is discernable in George Elliot Clarke’s poem “Blank Sonnet”. This poem expresses, the author’s difficult and awkward communication with a lover through a broken relationship. word choice and imagery is imperative to the overall effect and tone of the poem. The usage of an atypical sonnet stylization, broken sentences, forms of metaphors, symbolism, sensory language, and alliteration form strong imagery, and a sense of disconnect. The overall effect leaves the reader with a resonating feeling of emptiness.

against the standard poets to say the least, “I wanted to break the linearity of poetic text — to mess with it, if you will.” (poetryfoundation.org) He was not born into the wealthiest of families and found himself unable to pay for education, yet he has pushed boundaries for many

The main theme within Clarke’s Sonnet is his distance and inability to communicate with a lover due to his alcoholism, and the way in which his coping mechanism, and alcoholism affects this relationship. In the opening octet,

This sonnet has very smooth and fluid feel to it, most of which can be attributed to the iambic pentameter and Elizabethan sonnet rhyme scheme as well as the numerous sound

This poem is a perfect example of a closed form traditional sonnet. The rhyming scheme is in the form of ABCB, the best example of that is if you were to look at the first stanza, the last word in line two and four rhyme. This type of rhyming scheme is very basic, but it really helps emphasize his thoughts and bring out an emotional, aggressive tone.

Another way Dunbar criticizes his inability to escape the brand of a Dialect poet is in the structure of the poem. About three quarters of the poem is Dunbar speaking about his standard English works.

Finally, the structure of this sonnet brings the reader’s attention to what the point really is. Instead of making the narrator, full of desire for self-improvement, the hero of the sonnet, the final couplet corrals the reader’s attention back to the personality of the lunatic, who is the true focus of the poem.

In the opening lines of Millay’s poem, it seems as if she is speaking to a lover. The tone of the poem is set in the first line, “in some quite casual way” (1). Throughout the sonnet, one senses a frighteningly casual tone, something very matter of fact, as if these fourteen lines are a passing thought in Millay’s head. The alliteration of “quite casual” supports the plain-spoken tone, giving a feel of simple, everyday speech. Millay imagines that as she is on the subway, she casually glances over and notices on “the back-page of a paper, say / Held by a neighbor” (3-4) her lover is gone and not to return.

In Wordsworth’s sonnet, he uses only the four rhymes to show that, even in constraining himself, he is still free. He may be confined to a cell or a rhyme scheme, but it is in such confinements that he finds liberty. Millay, too, is playing off of this idea – simply by being a woman she is confined by society, but through her poetry she can recognized for the brilliant writer she is; hence, she quite literally frees her poetic reputation by constraining herself to such strict bounds. The irony in this reference to Wordsworth’s work, however, is the contrasting subject matters – he writes of metaphorical nuns, while she writes of rejection and lovers.

Poetry has a role in society, not only to serve as part of the aesthetics or of the arts. It also gives us a view of what the society is in the context of when it was written and what the author is trying to express through words. The words as a tool in poetry may seem ordinary when used in ordinary circumstance. Yet, these words can hold more emotion and thought, however brief it was presented.

into the poem. The section of the poem that will be analyzed is the final ten lines (25-34). The

What is typically found in this type of sonnet is a problem being presented in the octave and the resolution in the sestet; however in this poem there is no such shift. By not implementing this change, Brooke can maintain his theme of patriotism throughout.

Because the poem is long, it won’t be quoted extensively here, but it is attached at the end of the paper for ease of reference. Instead, the paper will analyze the poetic elements in the work, stanza by stanza. First, because the poem is being read on-line, it’s not possible to say for certain that each stanza is a particular number of lines long. Each of several versions looks different on the screen; that is, there is no pattern to the number of lines in each stanza. However, the stanzas are more like paragraphs in a letter than

The poem begins with two lines which are repeated throughout the poem which convey what the narrator is thinking, they represent the voice in